It wasn’t yet six when I slipped out of bed without waking my husband. I padded softly into the main room and then peeked in on our sleeping, curly-haired cowgirl. I watched her for a little while, wondering what kind of woman she would grow up to be.
Martha mouthed my hand. I assured her that I was on it, and quickly dressed in jeans and sweatshirt to take my good dog for a walk. I remembered something told to me by a stranger on a train. She was holding her baby, and she jerked on her dog’s leash to pull it under the seat.
She saw me looking at her, I guess with judgment in my eyes. She said, “Before you have a baby, your dog is your baby. When you have a baby, your dog is a dog.”
I stooped down to look Martha in the eyes.
“You know I still love you, don’t you?”
She wagged her tail, whined, and licked my face. I leashed my old friend, and we rode the elevator to street level.
It was still early morning. Other people walked their dogs, crossing the nearly empty street against the light. Martha wanted to play, but I gave her the next-best thing, a sprint to the corner of Lake and Eleventh and back.
All night my mind had flopped like a beached tuna. Claire. Dave Channing. Dead bodies in cold boxes awaiting burial and justice. My job.
We took the elevator up, and once inside our home, Martha cocked her head and whined, Feed me.
In the kitchen I filled a bowl for my fluffy old girl, brewed my morning joe, and flicked on the small under-cabinet TV to keep me company. The first morning show was in full swing when a bright-red breaking-news banner streaked across the screen.
What now? What the hell is it now?
CHAPTER 59
EARLY THAT MORNING Cindy was in her office, checking the East Coast news feeds, when her cell phone rang.
It was Serena Jackson, an old friend. They’d gone to Michigan together, and Serena had recently moved from Chicago to San Francisco for a high-profile job with KRON4.
“Cin, I’ve just heard that one of the snipers has issued a memo to the press,” she said. “Check your mail.”
With Serena on hold, Cindy scanned her mailbox and opened an email headed For Immediate Release.
Every word contained in its four paragraphs was a stunner.
She read it out loud to Serena, who said, “Get ready to break news, girlfriend. I’m in a satellite van less than ten minutes from the Chronicle’s front door.”
Cindy said, “I’ll call you right back.”
She read the email again.
It shook her as much on the second read and appeared to be every bit a blockbuster—raw, bloody, and ready to be splashed across TV screens everywhere. If it had been widely disseminated, the clock was ticking and the deadline was now.
She printed out the email and phoned Tyler to bring him into the loop, but at 7 a.m. her call went to voice mail.
What to do?
It was risky to go on the record with a story based on a totally blind lead, but it was done often enough. Unconfirmed at this time. Confidential sources say. And then there were the breathtaking Deep Throat leaks during Nixon’s last days.
Cindy thought over her options: take a moon shot, or go by a more cautious route. If she broke the news, she owned the scoop. If she waited …
She called Serena. “Give me ten minutes.”
Opening a new email file, Cindy wrote to Tyler, saying that a news bomb was about to drop, that she had judged the lead as authentic, and that she had moments to go live with the story before the competition broke it.
Cindy roughed out the story, and it was ready for edit in nothing flat. She gave it a headline, attached the unverified email, and, marking the package Urgent, fired it off to the publisher and editor in chief’s inbox.
Then she stuffed a copy of the email into her coat pocket, darted into a closing elevator, and rode it down to the street.
Serena was waiting for her on Mission, already set up for the interview.
The two friends and colleagues talked over the upside-downside ramifications while standing in the shadow of the Chronicle’s clock tower and agreed—the risk was worth taking. The business they were in, it was either go big or go home.
They took their seats in the tall director’s chairs facing the camera, their backs to the Chronicle Building, an umbrella shading their faces, the morning breeze messing with their hair.
The sound man tested the level. The cameraman counted off five seconds to go with his fingers, and then tape rolled. Serena introduced Cindy as the star reporter and head of the crime desk at the San Francisco Chronicle.
She said, “You have big news this morning, Cindy. A bombshell email that you’ve just posted on your crime blog, from someone claiming to have inside knowledge about the recent sniper attacks that have terrified people in five cities.”
“That’s exactly right, Serena. I received an email just minutes ago giving reasons for the sniper attacks and warning of future executions,” Cindy said. “I find the email credible. But viewers must understand that, like the Zodiac Killer’s letters to the Chronicle decades ago, the email is unsigned.
“I’ve weighed both sides of the argument carefully and have decided that it’s better to release this email than keep it quiet.”
“Cindy, is there a time stamp on that?”
“It landed in my inbox early this morning. The heading was ‘For Immediate Release.’”
“Can you read it for our viewers now?”
Cindy raised the sheet of paper from her lap and began to read the highlights.
“Quoting now: ‘This is a warning to all drug slingers, the pushers who sell grass, coke, meth, and Molly, the sickos who sell oxy, heroin, fentanyl, unprescribed pharmaceuticals, and designer drugs, or name your poison. Deaths from overdoses have risen to seventy thousand Americans per year, nearly half of those from opioids like fentanyl. It’s not okay. It’s not stopping. It’s getting worse.
‘A coalition of citizens across the country has had enough of ineffectual ad campaigns and political slogans. We’ve launched a new war on drugs. A real war. Nine scum dealers are dead so far and we’re just getting started. We have a list. If you’re part of the problem and value your life, stop selling drugs now, whatever it costs you. Destroy your product and get straight.
‘Or spin the wheel. You’ll never know when your number comes up.’”
Jackson said, “Cindy, correct me if I’m wrong, but until right now we have not known the motive for the shootings that have taken place here and in Chicago, LA, and, as of yesterday, Houston and San Antonio. Is that right?”
Cindy said, “There have been theories that there was a drug connection, but to my knowledge, this email is the first public communication from someone asserting a connection with the shooter or shooters and that their mission is to rub out drugs.
“We have to take it seriously.”
CHAPTER 60
CINDY WOVE THROUGH the maze of cubicles in the messy, crowded newsroom.
Artie Martini, sportswriter, called out over a partition, “Great interview, Cindy. I sent you the clip.”
“That was fast, Martini. Thanks.”
Cindy glanced through the glass wall of her office while fishing her keys out of her coat pocket. She had cleared her phone lines before the interview, and twenty minutes later, barely seven forty-five, all twelve buttons were in a blinking frenzy. She hoped that a cop friend, of which she had many, had called to confirm what she’d just told the entire freaking world.
And there was something else. The anonymous writer had said that nine victims were down.
She counted eight. If the writer was telling the truth, one victim had not yet been accounted for, or had not been connected to the others.
Either way, victim number nine was news.
Cindy retrieved her phone from her coat pocket, dropped into her chair, and turned on the Whistler TRX-1 scanner on the windowsill.
She started her beat check, again listened to the police radio, checked the wire
services and network feeds on her laptop. Satisfied that there hadn’t been a big earthquake or a fire on the West Coast, that no terrorists were holding an airliner hostage, she checked incoming email.
Her interview with Serena Jackson had been widely covered.
There were bulletins on Google and Yahoo!, and a request from the New York Times for more information, and she saw that other journalists who’d gotten their own copies of the war-on-drugs email had released it far and wide—but not first.
To her great relief, nothing in her mailbox claimed that the email was a hoax.
Cindy pulled the office phone toward her and began punching buttons.
The voice of Brittney Hall, Henry Tyler’s assistant, came over the speaker: “Cindy, Henry wants to see you at eight.”
Why? Slap on the back, or had her impromptu interview with Serena Jackson put her in trouble of the job-threatening kind?
The next caller was Lindsay: “Cindy, I just spoke with Claire. She’s out of the ICU. Room 1409, doped up, but receiving visitors for a couple of hours a day. She sounded okay. Considering. Hey. I saw your interview. You were terrific.”
Another dozen messages followed—more compliments on her interview, an art department query, an editor asking for a call back, but nothing that shook her world.
She called Johnson Hughes Cancer Treatment Center and was relayed from operator to nurse’s station to Claire’s room, until she spoke with a nurse’s aide who told her that Claire was with her doctor and took Cindy’s number.
Cindy went back to work and was googling Warning to drug dealers when her phone rang. The number on the caller ID was from a local exchange, but she didn’t recognize it. She picked up, hoping it was Claire.
“Cindy Thomas?”
The caller was male, and Cindy got a sudden chill when she realized that he’d disguised his voice with a digital voice changer.
“Speaking.”
“You read my email. I saw your interview, and you’ve earned a reward. We just put down another dirtbag in Chicago. A perfect hole in one. Have a good day.”
“Wait. Wait just a minute.”
The line was dead.
She tapped Call Back, but the unidentified caller didn’t pick up. Shit. She looked up the phone number and there was no listing. Of course the caller was using a burner phone.
Cindy scribbled notes, a verbatim account of what the caller had said. The ninth victim had been shot in Chicago. She sent the memo to Tyler, even as she checked the Chicago PD blotter. There was nothing there about a sniper shooting. It was early yet. For the moment, she had what the caller had implied; her reward was an exclusive.
She left a message for Serena to call her and simultaneously opened the Chicago Trib website. There was nothing there about a new sniper shooting. Nothing, nada, zip. If her anonymous caller had told her the truth, a Chicago drug dealer was dead, and the Chronicle still owned the story.
The digital clock in the lower right corner of her computer screen blinked 7:57. Pulling a mirror out of her pencil drawer, Cindy fluffed up her hair, slicked on some lip gloss. Then, clutching her phone and her tablet, she took off for Henry Tyler’s office.
Tyler’s PA, Brittney, betrayed not the smallest emotion as she waved Cindy into the office of the publisher and editor in chief.
Tyler was there. And so was Jeb McGowan.
CHAPTER 61
I TIPPED BACK my chair so that I could better see the TV hanging above my desk in the squad room.
News anchor Jason Kroner was reporting from the studio of ABC7 Chicago.
“According to a police source, this morning an unidentified man was found shot dead on the pavement on the Chicago Riverwalk at approximately 7:00 a.m. An hour later a person of interest in the shooting was apprehended on the Michigan Avenue Bridge, standing at a distance from his SUV, the engine left running and a .308 Remington rifle in the front seat.
“There’s a sight line from several places on the bridge to the pavement where the victim was discovered. The shooter may have fired from a vehicle.”
I sighed as the reporter gave a rip-and-wrap of the other sniper killings, all unsolved cases, starting with ours. And then there was a cutaway from Kroner to a thirty-second clip of Cindy reading the war-on-drugs manifesto.
Cindy could be annoying for sure, but she was really admirable—smart, professional, and I have to say it, adorable. Richie was beaming and we shared a grin. And then the camera was back on Kroner, who closed, saying that the station would update the story as news became available.
I said, “Could be a break. The guy said, ‘Stop selling drugs …. Or spin the wheel.’ Who says that? You say, ‘Take your chances.’ Or, ‘Roll the dice.’”
“It’s a reference to Moving Targets, all right.”
“Jesus. And the guy Chicago PD has in custody. I wonder if he was looking through a gun sight.”
“You feeling lucky?”
“If this is Christmas, the suspect has a beard and his name is Leonard Barkley.”
We stopped for coffee in the break room, then took the short walk down the hall, past the interrogation rooms, the elevator bank, and the virtually empty Robbery Division detail, and unlocked the door to our war room.
I sat down at the phone, punched in a number I’d put on speed dial. When a phone rang inside Chicago PD, I asked for Detective Richards.
He picked up, saying, “Boxer, are you haunting me?”
“I guess I am. Have you spoken to the unnamed gunman?”
“I processed him. His name is Jacob Stoll. He’s a former marine lieutenant, did a couple of tours in the ’Stan. His prints match what we got off of AFIS. He’s currently employed part-time as a school bus driver. The gun is registered to him and it wasn’t recently fired. We’re holding Stoll as a person of interest, but if he shot the guy found dead in the park, he didn’t use the rifle in his car.”
“No?”
“The gun hasn’t been recently fired. We’ll hold him as long as we can. It’s possible he shot the victim with a different firearm, maybe tossed it off the bridge.”
Conklin said, “Maybe he’s revisiting the scene to watch what the cops do.”
“Possible,” said Richards. “After we get him in the box, we’ll hear what he has to say.”
I said, “Richards, the so-called video game, Moving Targets. The person who tipped off the press used the phrase ‘spin the wheel.’”
“Yep, I got your email and saw your screen shot of the site. I’ll try to work it in when my partner and I talk to Stoll. Would you be interested in watching our interview, live streamed from our house to yours?”
“Hell no.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just kidding, Richards. That would be great. What do I have to do?”
“Stand by for a password. One more thing, Boxer.”
“What’s that?”
“You owe me.”
CHAPTER 62
CONKLIN AND I sat side by side at the old desk in the war room, staring into a computer screen that was, in effect, a window into an interrogation room at the Chicago PD Violent Crimes Division.
We got our first look at detective Sergeant Stanley Richards. He was fortyish, of average height and weight, a restless, hands-in-his-pockets, coin-jingling man with a five-o’clock shadow at ten in the morning.
He took his hands out of his chinos and dropped into a seat at the table approximately twenty-one hundred miles away from our desk in the war room. Sitting beside him was his partner, Detective Sandra Wilson. She was black, wearing a man-tailored white shirt, a navy-blue blazer a lot like mine, and a hint of a smile, an expression I would have loved to wear myself. She looked calm, relaxed, and unreadable.
The suspect, Jacob Stoll, sat opposite from the detectives and had sprawled across both chairs on his side and folded his arms over the table. His body language was saying that he owned the table, the room, the story he was about to tell.
My hope that Stoll was Leonard Barkley by anoth
er name evaporated. Unlike Barkley, who was a Fidel Castro lookalike, Stoll had a fleshy face. He looked to be six foot two to Barkley’s five foot nine, and he had a wide, toothy grin, perhaps prompting Detective Wilson’s Mona Lisa smile.
He said to her, “You’re a really good-looking woman, Detective, you know that?”
Wilson said nicely to Stoll, “Jacob? Okay if I call you Jacob? Mind taking a look at this?”
She held up her phone so that Stoll could see a photo. Richards had forwarded it to us, and I recognized the shot of the recently deceased man. According to the police report and the dead man’s bloodstained shirt, he had taken a bullet through his heart. According to Richards, he’d also had a boatload of heroin in his backpack.
Stoll said, “May I?” Without waiting for an answer, he took the phone from Wilson and gave the screen a good long look. Then he handed it back.
“I don’t recognize him, at least not from that angle. I can’t swear he wasn’t one of the three thousand enlisted men I trained or served with. But this I know: when you check my rifle, you’ll see it hasn’t been fired. You checked my hands for GSR, so you know I haven’t fired a weapon. Anything else?”
“Yeah,” said Richards. “Where were you at six thirty this morning?”
“Is that when that guy in the park bought it?”
“Where were you, Lieutenant Stoll?”
“I was at the South Blue Island Avenue bus depot having coffee and joking around with three other drivers and my supervisor, Jesse Kruse. We cleaned the buses, and I started my route at seven. Picked up thirty-six little kids and took them all to school. Drove nowhere near the Riverwalk. I got more eyewitnesses to my whereabouts than you got time in a week to interview.
“And now I have a question for you,” said Stoll. “Are we done? If not, I’m through talking without a lawyer. If so, I’ll take my gun and go about my business.”
Richards said, “Remember when I read you your rights?”
20th Victim: (Women’s Murder Club 20) (Women's Murder Club) Page 13